As primary season heats up, the candidates still remaining in the presidential race have begun fine-tuning their higher education plans. Candidates from both sides of the aisle have spoken about how they would change, revamp, and, in some cases, fix higher education. But aside from Marco Rubio, only those from the Democratic party had rolled out specific plans to address rising tuition costs and astronomical student debt prior to the first primary contest in Iowa.

While we evaluate who’s still left in the race, let’s begin to look at the remaining candidates’ positions on higher education. Keep reading to learn more.

Bernie Sanders

As previously noted, Bernie Sanders’ education plan aims to make postsecondary education free at both community colleges and public four-year universities.

Historically Black College and Universities

In an appeal to lure African American voters and young people, Sanders asserted that tuition-free education would not force private historically black college and universities (HBCUs) to close down.

Representing the 6^th District of South Carolina and an influential power broker in presidential primary races, Congressman James Clyburn expressed his concerns over the prospect of free public education and the impact on black colleges.

“You’ve got to think about the consequences of things. If you start handing out two years of free college at public institutions are you ready for all the black, private HBCUs to close down? That’s what’s going to happen,” Clyburn said.

In a recent interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall confirming his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, Clyburn also said of the Sanders tuition-free education plan and the America’s College Promise plan proposed by the current administration, “there are no free lunches so there will be no free education.”

Student Loans and Interest Rates

Part of the Sanders education plan also includes lowering the interest rates on student loans. Sanders hopes to reduce loan interest rates to what they were 10 years ago. In 2006, undergraduate student loans hovered around 2.37 percent, which would cut the current rate of 4.39 percent nearly in half.

Sanders believes students should be able to refinance their loans in a similar fashion as auto loans. According to Sanders, if a loan for a car can be obtained at a 2.5 percent interest rate, why are students forced to pay between 5-7 percent for multiple decades? From the beginning, Sanders has vowed to prevent the federal government from making money on student loans but it remains to be seen just how he’d stop the profiting.

Hillary Clinton

There are commonalites between Democratic candidates Sanders and Clinton surrounding student debt and tuition-free community college. While Sanders believes there is a way to make both two-year and four-year public colleges tuition-free, Clinton’s New College Compact plan stipulates that students should never need to borrow to pay for tuition, books, and fees to attend a public in-state university. The Clinton education plan also calls for the ability for Pell Grants to be used for living expenses.

Historically Black College and Universities

As part of her plan to attract minority voters and young people, part of Clinton’s education plan includes a $25 billion investment in HBCUs, hispanic serving institutions (HSI), and other minority serving institutions (MSI) serving a high percentage of Pell Grant recipients in an effort to lower cost and increase student outcomes. This fund would also help low to moderately endowed nonprofit private institutions within the HBCU system. Contrary to Sanders, Clinton plans to invest in private postsecondary education, acknowledging that private colleges also help under-served students graduate.

Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio’s higher education plan, which emphasizes access and affordability, includes cheaper options for online education. Rubio also calls for students to treat themselves as commodities when applying to college, and asks students to embrace what he refers to as “human capital contracts” by selling themselves to private investors.

He asserts that students should know how much they could expect to earn before taking out a loan to pay for their education. Rubio maintains that the current higher education system in this country is outdated, broken, and “needs a disruption,” citing that college is too expensive, time consuming, and inflexible. Rubio uses partisan language to explain that the Democrats’ approach to fixing higher education is the same one attempted in Washington for decades by pouring money into an outdated system and raising taxes.

Income-Based Loan Repayment

There are some facets of Rubio’s education plan that are consistent with Clinton and Sanders. They are in agreement on investing in student success and wanting to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). However, Rubio wants to implement an automatic income-based student loan repayment plan in order to ease student loan debt. The current administration has already enacted repayment plans that are income-based as an option, but Rubio believes this should be the sole universal method for federal student loans.

Ties to Corinthian Colleges

In an effort to move higher education into the 21^st century, Rubio wants to ease access to state colleges and online education opportunities, and reshape accrediting entities to accommodate non-traditional education. This may raise concern with voters based on his ties to the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, which have contributed to his Reclaim America Pac.

Last spring, Corinthian Colleges filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut their doors for good, which adversely impacted over 16,000 students. In December of 2015, the Obama administration began the process to forgive nearly $28 million in federal student loans for over 1,300 students that said the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges violated their rights on grounds that they used deceptive tactics to convince students to take out loans. Now up to 350,000 students could be forgiven for taking out loans to pay tuition.

John Kasich

GOP Candidate Governor John Kasich of Ohio plans to keep college affordable by focusing on the 100 percent performance-based funding formula that emphasizes completion and graduation rates. The formula that has kept Ohio a leader in the nation with regard to freezing tuition rates for the next couple of years, Kasich plans to expand what has worked in Ohio to a federal level. The remaining focuses of Kasich’s education plan are centered heavily on K-12 education.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz

Neither Donald Trump nor Texas Senator Ted Cruz have released their plans for higher education. However, in recent weeks Trump has been accused of scamming students with his for-profit Trump University, which began operating in 2005. Rubio attacked Trump, calling the university a “fake school,” and claiming the university has been defrauding students out of thousand of dollars after reports were revealed that students are currently suing Trump for restitution.

Conclusion

As the field narrows, voters are going to need to decide who their next president will be based on issues extending far beyond higher education. That said, the candidates left standing need to be clear about all of their plans. That includes laying out specifics on how to implement each education plan, including how they will be paid for, and who in the new president’s cabinet will oversee these implementations.

Some of these higher education plans are more radical than others, but hopefully as the election season gathers steam, voters will finally be privy to what higher education will look like for incoming students, new graduates paying back student loans, and mid-career professionals who may seeking relief from drowning in student loan debt.

Resources

Real Clear Politics: 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination

Buzzfeed: Clyburn: Sanders’ Education Plan is a Disaster for Private Black Colleges

Center for Responsive Politics: Corinthian Colleges 2014

New York Times: Ben Carson Seeing No Path Forward, Signals End of Candidacy

New York Times: Super Tuesday Results

Washington Post: Students of Defunct For-Profit Colleges to Receive $28 Million in Loan Forgiveness

Think Progress: Rubio Attacked Trump for Running a ‘Fake School.’ But There’s Just One Problem

Jamal Evan Mazyck

Jamal Mazyck is currently pursuing an Ed.D. in educational leadership and is a graduate research assistant at San Diego State University. When he is not writing, researching or tweeting about the ins and outs of higher education, he can be found on the tennis court and running half-marathons. Contact Jamal at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Now more than ever, families need to seriously weigh the financial pros and cons of universities. But there are some tools that can help–for example, the development of College Abacus, a website that makes it easier for students and their families to compare financial aid packages before applying to schools. College Abacus has been deemed the “Kayak” of college financial aid, but it’s always been controversial, and some schools have not allowed College Abacus to use their information. Schools such as Skidmore and Oberlin have lifted their original bans on the site, but others such as Harvard, Princeton, and California Institute of Technology Schools still block the site from using their information. While some of the concerns are warranted, schools are doing a disservice to their students by blocking the site.

When it comes down to it, college is an investment. While the profitable gains of the college experience remain immeasurable, the amount of debt students incur can easily be measured by families and graduates alike years after memories have faded. Since October 29, 2011 the Higher Education Act (HEA) has required colleges to provide a net price calculator on their websites. The price generated by these net price calculators gives an estimate of what families will pay for college minus grants and scholarships. The calculator bases its information off of similar data from students at that institution from the previous year. College Abacus helps students easily see these net prices together, and cuts down the time of entering the same information into multiple calculators on school websites.

Image courtesy of [SemperDoctus via Wikimedia]

Harvard, Princeton, and Cal Tech are not alone in their refusal to participate in College Abacus’s services. Schools have a right to worry about the site’s accuracy. The service sometimes takes similar questions from the different schools’ financial aid calculators and groups them together for comparison. At one point, College Abacus made a mistake when rephrasing a financial aid question for Hamilton College, which the co-founder of Abacus sorted out within 24 hours after the financial aid director of Hamilton reached out. The staff at Abacus welcomes concerns from financial aid officers, and relies on the schools for accuracy. But by opting out, schools block the site from accessing their net calculators.

Truly, students and their families are hurt when colleges and universities block Abacus. It has simply created a platform for families to compare the financial investment of college. Money may be the most objective differentiate between two schools for an individual family. The debate goes on for hours about the right environment, professors, dorms, location, etc between two schools, but comparing the potential net cost does not need to be an additional ordeal. In this new age of technology, universities should welcome tools creating more transparency for their future students.

Dorsey Hill

Dorsey is a member of Barnard College’s class of 2016 with a major in Urban Studies and concentration in Political Science. As a native of Chicago and resident of New York City, Dorsey loves to explore the multiple cultural facets of cities. She has a deep interest in social justice issue especially those relevant to urban environments. Contact Dorsey at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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For centuries, there have been a handful of professions that are respected and privileged around the world: doctor, lawyer, and professor all come to mind. These professions are often thought of in broad stereotypes–elderly men sitting in wood-lined studies, wearing jackets with patches on the elbows, and heading off to golf games at three in the afternoon. In reality, all three of these professions have diversified over the past fifty years, yet we still think of them as representative of the upper class. While medical and legal salaries are still generous and relatively stable, the same cannot be said for academia. Success as a professor is now inextricably linked to receiving tenure (a permanent job contract), without which professors are often relegated to “visiting” or “assistant/adjunct” professor status. Without the protection of tenure, adjunct professors are constantly vulnerable and rarely get the support and resources they need to put their best foot forward in the classroom. Read on for a look at the realities of being a professor in America.

What is tenure?

In the American collegiate system, professors receive tenure after several years of teaching at a given institution, usually three years at community colleges and six to seven years at four-year colleges. Although tenure was designed to protect the academic freedom and economic stability of professors, many education experts argue that it promotes lackluster teaching, as professors cease to engage with their students as soon as they receive tenure. Tenure is not a lifetime job guarantee, but a school administration cannot dismiss a tenured professor unless they present sufficient evidence that the professor is incompetent or has behaved inappropriately, or that an academic department must be closed for financial reasons. Although most professors enter the teaching field with tenure as their ultimate goal, the number of tenured professors in the United States has been steadily declining in recent years. Colleges rely increasingly on part-time or non-tenure-track professors to fill their open positions, because they can hire and fire faculty on a rotating basis. A non-tenure-track contract is designed to hire for the short term, and while some PhD students embark on the non-tenure-track by choice, a majority view non-tenure-track positions as an interim until they can switch to the tenure track. Unfortunately, the more reliant colleges become on non-tenure-track professors, the fewer tenure track positions are opened. Non-tenure-track contracts let colleges save money, as they are paying professors “per course” as opposed to the fixed salary that tenured professors receive. According to Forbes contributor and Professor David Kroll,

Rather than paying a professor $75,000 plus benefits, you can now hire from the ranks of unemployed scientists a no-benefits PhD at $3,000-$4,500 per 3 credit hour class per semester. I have seen some tenure-track faculty actually be threatened by their supervisors with being replaced by such adjunct faculty if they can’t score grant funding. The abuse of adjunct faculty by US universities is a travesty.

A 2014 report by the U.S. House of Representatives revealed that a large portion of non-tenure-track professors live below the poverty line, whereas their tenured colleagues receive a significant and stable salary. The alleged exploitation of non-tenure-track faculty has flown largely under the radar in recent political debates over American higher education. The Obama administration has worked tirelessly to promote higher education–aiming to make it affordable and inclusive, encouraging as many students as possible to enroll. The introduction of the College Scorecard this year gave students access to a “data dump of epic proportions” but it doesn’t tell them anything about the professors who teach at a given school.

This is problematic for many reasons. For example according to Adrianna Kezar’s Delphi Project, students taught primarily by adjunct professors are more likely to drop out. According to an interview Kezar gave to The Atlantic last year:

This high attrition rate has nothing to do with the quality of instruction adjuncts provide; it is entirely a function of the compromised working conditions adjuncts face…universities do not give adjuncts the basic resources they need to properly teach their courses, such as sample syllabi or learning objectives. Since most departments hire adjuncts at the last minute, they are often inadequately prepared to enter the classroom. Universities do not provide adjuncts with office space, making it difficult for them to meet with students outside class. To make matters worse, many adjuncts teach at several colleges to make ends meet: Commuting—sometimes between great distances—further reduces the time they can devote to individual students.

The United States is graduating more students than ever before, yet there are concerns that we’re not paying attention to who is teaching those students and how well they are compensated for their efforts.

Who Defends Non-Tenure-Track Professors?

The Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW), an umbrella organization comprised of various academic unions and advocacy groups, has aimed to address the unjust nature of the existing tenure system. CAW has conducted various surveys of faculty across the nation and has published a series of reports condemning the inequality of the current academic system.

But the majority of CAW’s research, which concludes that pay is too low and there is little opportunity for advancement for adjunct professors, has been ignored by college administrations and politicians alike. Most lawmakers focus on public K-12 education when discussing tenure, balancing the interests of taxpayers and teachers unions. Higher learning is often left off the docket at town hall debates and round table discussions on whether abandoning tenure is the next great reform in education.

Although some adjuncts prefer the flexibility of a short-term contract, the majority of those surveyed in University of Michigan study were concerned with job security and the potential for professional growth.  The study also found that non-tenure-track faculty often felt they were disrespected or excluded in the workplace, suggesting that tenure-track professors rarely welcome their adjunct colleagues into their departments–perhaps because they fear they will be replaced by adjuncts, as Kroll suggested.

Tenure in K-12 Education

In public K-12 schools, tenure (which is usually received after three years of teaching) protects teachers from being fired without just cause. Though tenure is meant to protect teachers and reward them for positive work, parents and educational reformers often worry that it protects bad teachers while preventing more qualified teachers from entering the school district. Teachers’ unions have historically defended tenure, arguing that it protects teachers from discrimination and unwarranted criticism. In October, New York teachers unions sought to dismiss a case that would make it easier for school districts to fire teachers and extend the number of years necessary to receive tenure from three to four. The judge denied the motion to dismiss the case and it will move forward in the coming months.

The case argues that tenure violates students’ civil rights because inefficient  teachers receive job protection in some of the most disadvantaged schools in the country. In the case of K-12 education, cases are often fought between the teachers unions and a coalition of parents–each side is well-organized, committed, and can find political allies relatively easily. Almost every municipality has its own teachers union, which feed into larger regional and national union structures. By contrast, academia’s umbrella union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), only has chapters in a few dozen of the thousands of American colleges across the nation. AAUP aims to advocate for professors but it has nowhere near the political sway of K-12 teachers’ unions.

What are the arguments for preserving the current system?

Advocates for preserving the tenure track argue that it is the most effective defense against “anti-intellectualism” in academia. Without tenure, professors may be fired simply for having controversial opinions–Professor Jonathan R. Cole of Columbia University explains:

Tenure grew up in the first two decades of the 20th century in response to the abusive use of power by university presidents and Trustees who were free to fire professors for almost any reason, most often because of their social and political views…in the past decade, strong opposition to the War in Iraq and Afghanistan led to sanctions and dismissals of non-tenured faculty at American universities…f we demand conformity and orthodoxy among our professor, and we fail to protect them when they play the critical role that is at the heart of a great university, then the quality of our institutions of higher learning will inevitably decline.

Proponents of the tenure track also argue that providing tenure retains good teachers and attracts teachers of a higher quality to a given school, although this argument is often applied to K-12 schools rather than higher education. Tenure provides economic stability that makes the teaching profession more attractive, encouraging our brightest minds to give back to the next generation through teaching.

All of these arguments present valid reasons for preserving tenure, but critics worry that none of them address why tenure-track academia has become such an exclusive club in the United States. If tenure is such a beneficial system, why are universities so hesitant to expand it? Universities have the right to deny tenure if they find the candidate to be a bad professor, but if they are turning away qualified candidates merely to cut costs, the tenure system appears to have strayed far from its original goals.

Conclusion

In the twenty-first century, higher education has shifted from an option to almost an inevitable step in the lives of many high school students. As we send more and more students off to four-year colleges, it is critical we understand exactly where their tuition money is going and what they are paying for when they enroll in a course. Will they be greeted by a professor who is well-prepared, enthusiastic, and supported by the administration or by a professor who can barely present a coherent lesson–either because tenure has left them complacent or because the stressful nature of adjunct teaching has left them physically and mentally exhausted? We owe to it both students and teachers to create environments where talent is recognized and rewarded.  The tenure system needs to be debated and reformed both within individual universities and on a national level.  Unless we open this dialogue soon, there’s concern that we’ll see American universities mutate from beacons of learning and opportunity into inefficient programs that value cost-efficiency over education.

Resources

Primary

U.S. House of Representatives: The Just In Time Professor: A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education

Additional

AFT Higher Education: The Growth of Full-Time Nontenure-Track Faculty

National Education Association: The Truth about Tenure in Higher Education

The  Atlantic: The Adjunct Revolt: How Poor Professors Are Fighting Back

Forbes: Top 10 Reasons Being A University Professor Is A Stressful Job

Inger Bergom and Jean Waltman: Satisfaction and Discontent: Voices of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

AFT: How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students

The Washington Examiner: Unions Suffer Loss in Teacher Tenure Court Case

A Coalition on the Academic Workforce: A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members: A Summary of Findings on Part-Time Faculty Respondents to the Coalition on the Academic Workforce Survey of Contingent Faculty Members and Instructors (2012)

Slate: Finishing School: The Case for Getting Rid of Tenure

The Huffington Post: Why Academic Tenure is Essential for Great Universities

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Professor in Name Only: Teaching Without Tenure in American Universities appeared first on Law Street.

In our increasingly diverse society, one debate that’s pretty common to hear floating around is about “affirmative action.” Particularly in regards to college admissions, both proponents and critics of the programs have a lot to say.  Read on to learn about the history of affirmative action policies, and the arguments for and against them.

What is Affirmative Action?

Affirmative action is defined as “a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.”  AA has existed since the Civil Rights Movement. It began with President John F. Kennedy’s passage of Executive Order 10925, which required government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” This essentially mandated that anyone hired by the federal government could not discriminate based on race or ethnicity.

According to current federal AA law, schools giving race-based admissions must meet the strict scrutiny rule. This rule was recently reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2013 Fisher v. University of Texas. If race is used in college application admissions, then the school (or the government if it is a state school) bears the legal burden of demonstrating that it was done because it is “closely related to a compelling government interest” and “narrowly tailored” to meet that interest.  The school must also demonstrate that race-neutral alternatives are not viable in that case.

The debate over AA was also invigorated in 2014, with the Supreme Court Decision Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. The state of Michigan had banned AA policies at their universities. The court decided that Michigan’s ban of the policies did not violate the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, along with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the Schuette decision. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor stated:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.

However, AA policies are not consistent state-by-state, and the Schuette case is just another example of the flexibility that states are allowed to take with their policies.

Since JFK’s executive order, AA policies have been modified and refined by the legislature and the courts.  In fact, many sociologists and other experts have reach opposing conclusions about the efficacy of AA on redressing the effects of historical discrimination.  This has led to AA becoming a source of significant political controversy.  AA has been both implemented and enforced at both the federal and the state levels.  Individual states can have vastly different AA policies from the federal government and from each other.  AA is primarily implemented through efforts to “improve the employment and educational opportunities of women and members of minority groups through preferential treatment in job hiring, college admissions, the awarding of government contracts, and the allocation of other social benefits.”

What’s the argument to get rid of Affirmative Action?

Proponents of repealing AA argue that the policy of considering the race of potential beneficiaries disproportionately benefits upper and middle class racial minorities at the expense of poor Caucasians.  Since a larger proportion of minorities are poor than Caucasians, class-based AA would help poor racial minorities more than it would help poor Caucasians. AA can disproportionately harm certain minority groups while benefiting others. For example, Asian Americans have more difficulty getting into top private universities than African Americans, Latino Americans, and Caucasians.  Affirmative Action is reverse-discrimination and it requires the same discrimination that it is supposed to prevent, therefore it is counterproductive. In many cases, it can require less qualified or unqualified applicants to be accepted into positions at the expense of qualified applicants resulting in their eventual failure.

What’s the argument to keep Affirmative Action policies in place?

Opponents of repealing AA argue that ensuring equality of opportunity regardless of one’s background creates the best possible social, cultural and economic future for the people of the United States.  Equality is also most conducive to the strength of the U.S. national defense. Failing to provide such equality would be contrary to the principles that led to the founding of the United States. Some argue that AA should be class-based only.  However, racial minorities of all socioeconomic classes are vulnerable to discrimination and many minorities in all classes become victims of discrimination.  Therefore, in order to be effective AA must be race based as well. Studies have shown that people with “black sounding” names are less likely to be contacted for job interviews than people with “white sounding names. AA has contributed to the creation to the “black middle class” as well.  Finally, studies have shown that minority students are more likely to experience hostility and negative treatment in states that ban AA than in states that utilize it.

Conclusion

Affirmative action policies are a common cause of debate, especially when it comes to our public universities. While they certainly have proved their benefits, there are also valid concerns about the ethical benefits and detractors of the policies.

Resources

Primary

Supreme Court: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, et al.

Additional

Stanford Magazine: The Case Against Affirmative Action

American Prospect: Class-Based Affirmative Action Is Not the Answer

Annenberg Media Center: Fisher v. UT Austin: Why Affirmative Action Should Be Eliminated

Pantagraph: Affirmative Action Should Be Eliminated

Alternet: 10 Reasons Affirmative Action Still Matters Today

TIME: Why We Still Need Affirmative Action

New Yorker: Why America Still Needs Affirmative Action

Real Clear Politics: Good News About Affirmative Action’s Future

Cornell University Law School: Affirmative Action

About News: The Affirmative Action Debate: Five Concerns

About News: Key Events in Affirmative Action’s History

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Affirmative Action

Newsweek: Why We Still Need Affirmative Action

John Gomis

John Gomis earned a Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School in June 2014 and lives in New York City. Contact John at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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I’m not a violent person. Some may even say I’m compassionate. But if I were to witness the defenestration of George Will, I cannot deny that I would crack a smile.

What has caused such a drastic shift in my nature? Well, the columnist recently published an article in the Washington Post spewing his opinion that colleges and universities “make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges.”

Let’s let that sink in. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Princeton educated, syndicated columnist has stated that being a victim of sexual assault is a privilege. When my eyes were first subjected to that sentence my body went into shock, as I was not sure if I should shriek, gag, or faint from the ignorance. Perhaps the Fox News Kool-Aid is stronger than previously suspected, but this is new realm of revolting that I didn’t think possible.

One of Will’s arguments against the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” is the statistic of women who will be sexually assaulted while in college: 1 in 5. Although the government, nonprofits, and research institutions support the statistics he attempts to discredit, the evidence is still not enough for good ol’ George. Dr. Jen Gunter broke down (accurately this time) the “pesky arithmetic” Will complained about. I recommend that Will and all those who agree with his assessment give it a thorough read.

Schools are more frequently including trigger warnings at the beginning of lectures and assigned readings in an effort to alert people who may self-harm or have their post-traumatic disorder triggered by exposure to controversial readings and assignments. Will scoffed at this concept, belittling individuals who would benefit from the notices. The mocking of trigger warnings was the garnish atop a cocktail already soiled with hebenon.

Four Senators sent a letter to Will challenging his position on the issue of sexual assault. He issued a rebuttal, including this nonsensical gem:

“I think I take sexual assault much more seriously than you do.”

Really? Is he truly going to claim that he takes assault more seriously than four Senators who have dedicated their careers to helping victims; not downplaying the trauma they have endured like he has done?

As an Ivy-educated, affluent white male in America it may be fair to deduce that George Will hasn’t faced too many incidents of sexism or racism throughout his experiences — but that is neither my place nor anyone else’s to presume. Just as I do not know his personal history, he is not aware of the thousands of victim’s experiences he was so quick to demean.

Although offensive and infuriating to read, his column serves as an example of the beliefs surrounding sexual assault that continue to plague our society even when there is evidence to refute them. If any good has come from his piece, it is that the backward way of how victims are viewed is being thrust into public conversation.

I am not the first to voice my disdain for Will’s column, and likely not the last. Just last night the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dropped him due to his comments. Everywhere he turns he should be saturated with vehement rebuttals exposing the callousness of his article.

—

Alex Hill is a student at Virginia Tech majoring in English and Political Science. A native of the Washington, D.C. area, she blames her incessant need to debate and write about politics on her proximity to the nation’s capital. Contact Alex at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Scott Ableman via Flickr]

Alex Hill

Alex Hill studied at Virginia Tech majoring in English and Political Science. A native of the Washington, D.C. area, she blames her incessant need to debate and write about politics on her proximity to the nation’s capital.

The post Dear George Will: Sexual Assault Isn’t a Privilege appeared first on Law Street.